


The wind is harsh and unforgiving

by tahanrien



Category: Journey (Video Games)
Genre: Gen, Misses Clause Challenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-23
Updated: 2012-12-23
Packaged: 2017-11-22 03:13:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,360
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/605207
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tahanrien/pseuds/tahanrien
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The ancestors can't be there all along the way, but they make sure to always watch.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The wind is harsh and unforgiving

**Author's Note:**

  * For [laughingpineapple](https://archiveofourown.org/users/laughingpineapple/gifts).



> Thank you so much, Vae, for being such a lovely beta reader.

The wind is harsh and unforgiving, grabbing you at your shoulders and your clothes, dragging you back. The wind is too strong for you to wrap your scarf closer around you; it's whipped back by the torrent, leaving you exposed to the elements. Your legs aren't strong enough to walk up against it, and so it throws you back if you don't push, and even if you push, you cannot win. You will, as all others have done before you, but at the same time, you won't, ever. The wind drags you back, no matter what.

She knows all this, but she doesn't remember it. Her body has forgotten all sense of time and space; often, she is not even sure she has a body. An ancestor doesn't need one anyway.

No, it's by watching their travelers that she knows. It's the little ones that fight the raging storm, shudder from the biting cold, blink against the brightness, the darkness, the sand, and the wind, always the wind. By watching them it is as if she was making the Journey herself all over, again and again.

Except that she never made it.

She is just watching them when she can, waiting for their calls to her. To her or to the others. Without bodies, outside of except when the little ones call them, the ancestors can't see each other. When the little ones are lighting up the altars to receive wisdom from them, to get told about the Journey, then yes. But only then. It's fine though, the ancestor knows the others well enough. She knows they are watching as well, and then with every Journey of a little one, she feels close to them.

The ancestor doesn't remember being young, or having her scarf grow around her, it was all too long ago; another life. When she tells the story to the little ones, she doesn't expect her memories to come back. The life she had is gone. She can only look forward. Only the Journey matters now.

The little ones are walking it, and she watches them. She watches the one just reborn, the little one taking her first steps in the desert, sluggish and fighting to stay upright. The ancestor doesn't know the little one's call; she probably doesn't yet know how to call out, but she will learn soon.

There is another little one, running through the underground halls. It is hiding at the sides, pressed close to the stone of a pillar, and it has been there for some time. Maybe it's unsure of the dragons roaming about, how their searching gaze sweeps over the ground. The ancestor doesn't feel fear, and she can only guess at the little one's emotions. They will make the Journey regardless, the ancestor knows that by now. Very few get lost in the desert, or the heights, or the snow.

, the little one calls out all of sudden, a powerful shout, thundering through the hall and for a moment, the darkness almost seems gone. The dragons of stone can't hear it; it's not their language. She can, though, and she wants to help, but can't. It's not her Journey.

Suddenly, right after the shout, the answer comes: , from the other side of the room, two, three times in a row.

So the little one is not alone. The ancestor feels something like relief, only it's too fleeting to be real or even measured. She watches the companions reunite under the stone bones of a dragon. They press close, giving out high staccato calls, and now their scarfs are bright as beacons, strongly shining against the darkness.

There are other little ones, running over bridges, standing under cascades of sand, resting on monuments they don't know about. They are jumping over each other, shouting  and  and , until they are soaring high.

And there is another little one, almost at the end of her Journey. She just rests under the dragon's bones, unsure of when to take the last steps, and while the ancestor is watching, she seems to decide. She runs, jumping high with her scarf already half frozen, so she doesn't get far. Her movements are sluggish, but it is not that she doesn't know how to move, it's that the cold of the mountain is getting to her.

The little one is fighting against it, of course, her body still used to the hotness of the desert, to the sun always shining and how it lit up the world in all the red glory. Here, the only red is the little one's clothes and the dragon's hunting glare.

She is past that now, she is at the gate. This will be the last part of her Journey, that's just how it is. Even frozen, the little one's scarf is just so short. The dragons must have caught her at least once, to take away all the hard work she had done until then.

, the little one calls out, not loud enough to reach over the cries of the wind and there is no answer. She is all alone.

Watching, the ancestor wants nothing more but to answer the call. I can hear you, she wants to say with her call. Just a bit longer, just a bit more, and then you have made it. Don't worry, little one, she would say, thousands have gone the way before you, don't give up, just go. But it is not yet time.

The little one's call is growing weaker and weaker as she fights to stay upright, to go on. The wind is harsh and unforgiving, grabbing at her shoulders and her clothes, dragging her back. It's too strong for her to wrap her scarf closer around herself, if there's even a bit of scarf left that isn't frozen yet; it's whipped back by the torrent, leaving her exposed to the elements. 

Her legs aren't strong enough to walk up against it, and so it throws her back if she doesn't push, and even if she pushes, she cannot win. She will, as all others have done before her, but at the same time--

She leaning forward now, almost bent in half, to be able to still walk. The way is steep now, the mountain too high, and yet she is walking on. She could run back, but none of them ever run back. The ancestor admires that in them, because it's something that never occurs to them. The ancestor knows of the one lost in the desert, in the jumps, on the high bridges, but most go on. Most never think of giving up, even when their clothes are frozen, the wind so biting that it must hurt to leave open their eyes, and yet they want to complete the Journey.

This one as well: she is walking oh so slowly now, just dragging her feet forward, step by step. The snow reaches up her legs, slowing her down even more. The ancestor knows she is trying to call out, cry out a desperate  maybe, or a sorrowful , soft and lonely.

The little one wants to call out, but she can't. The cold has taken everything from her, her scarf frozen and dead, and her soft, almost weightless body will be numb, her powers dwindling. And she tries to go on, to reach the mountain, but as all little ones, she can't.

She can’t do it alone.

Sinking in the snow, she dies.

And the ancestor stops watching and goes to her, with the others.

And calls out to her.

And when the little one sits up, staring at the ancestor, a soft  coming from her, the ancestors light up the little one's scarf, her clothes, her being, now bright and powerful and majestic, just as it should be. And this is what the ancestors are here for, for this part, to show the way and to give help when one little one can't go on alone anymore. To ready the unyielding traveler in this fallen world, now on the last step up to the mountain, to what might or might not be salvation.

To the end of her Journey.

**Author's Note:**

> Dear laughingpineapple, I hope you like where I went with your suggestion about the ancestors and that you play Journey again some time, and then maybe we'll meet each other in the endless desert or in the dragon-infested halls or even on the snowy bridges. :)


End file.
